Massachusetts-based nonprofit, FinTech Sandox, has today announced the addition of EDGAR Online – which will allow its startup residents to access over 20 million comprehensive regulatory filings that are maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - through access to EDGAR Online’s API and portal.
The available reports for Fintech Sandbox's residents will provide financial and ownership disclosures – among other material data sets - on many thousands of new and existing companies that have filing obligations with the SEC where such reports are facilitated through EDGAR Online reporting tools and made available daily in real-time.
US capital markets
FinTech Sandbox provides a number of potential benefits to fintech startup firms that qualify as residents to receive perks including free data or subscriptions - in order to help foster innovations - that would otherwise put financial strains on startup firms with limited operating capital.
The addition of the EDGAR Online solution adds a significant tool for resident firms that are focused on the US capital markets including regional exchanges or companies with related SEC filing obligations.
It's all in the filings
Pubic companies often file material and sometime immaterial information with regulators before being able to disclose it to the public, where the filings in turn end up being the initial source of the news and the first place that the investing community accesses the data through 3rd party solutions including as news or trading signals within trading platforms.
Furthermore, some institutional traders - including HFT and proprietary trading firms - may employ complex event processing (CEP) to take into consideration news from such sources including Twitter - alongside quantitative data and technical analysis about market prices, in order to make trading decisions on the combined actionable information.
The new world of Online Trading , fintech and marketing – register now for the Finance Magnates Tel Aviv Conference, June 29th 2016.
Supporting Sandox residents
As part of the deal, FinTech Sandbox residents will have access to a mobile-friendly and configurable online DataFied API from EDGAR Online, aimed to empower technologies that can Leverage – for example – machine learning across vast data sets. The data, from both historical and real-time filings, can help fintechs forecast how trends and news may affect the prices of publicly traded securities (or related assets).
Companies such as Kensho employ such abilities to find information that could otherwise take humans too long to find before the impact was realized in market prices. In addition, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning appear to be areas that will propel the evolution of robo-advisors - from their current phase of mostly simple algorithmic allocations based on short-form questionnaires.
Fintechs need API data
Commenting in a corporate statement regarding the new addition, Jean Donnelly, Executive Director at FinTech Sandbox said,“EDGAR Online has long been a premier resource for investment data derived from SEC filings and disclosure documents.”
Mrs. Donnelly further explained: “Adding EDGAR Online as a data partner provides our FinTech entrepreneurs with broader access to SEC-filed data, which our residents use in a number of ways, such as converting this data into useful signals on a company’s history, progress and perhaps a glimpse into its future.”
“We’re demonstrating our support of FinTech Sandbox’s mission to reduce the barriers for FinTech entrepreneurs to access public company data. We look forward to engaging with Sandbox residents and helping them introduce further innovation to financial solutions.” said Craig Clay, the Executive Vice President of R. R. Donnelley & Sons EDGAR Online group, commenting in the official announcement."
Finance Magnates had met with FinTech Sandox during its exhibition at the New York Empire Startips Fintech event earlier in April, and shortly after the company struck a synergy with Markit that was also detailed in a prior post, as the company continues to grow its non-profit business to support innovations in finance.